State reps pass bill on NorthPoint

State legislators took a big step forward last week in clearing up at least some of the confusion that has been stalling a gigantic East Cambridge development.

Matt Dunning

State legislators took a big step forward last week in clearing up at least some of the confusion that has been stalling a gigantic East Cambridge development.

The state Senate approved a bill earlier this week to correct a licensing issue highlighted in a 2006 lawsuit filed by a group of Cambridge residents. The bill, which passed a House vote last week, would essentially grant the state’s Department of Environmental Protection the same authority it had been exercising for years.

The bill, which passed 147-3 in the House, would give the state’s DEP the right to grant exemptions from laws protecting waterways — more specifically, landlocked filled tidelands — known as Chapter 91. In February, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the department had improperly given NorthPoint developers such an exemption. The bill does not force NorthPoint developers, who are currently locked in a legal battle of their own, to obtain a new Chapter 91 permit.

Earlier this year, the House and Senate filed competing bills to correct the problem created by the SJC ruling. The House version called for the creation of a newly minted state department to oversee tideland and pond protection. The conference committee convened to manufacture some sort of compromise between the two bills reached resolution Wednesday night. In lieu of a new regulatory department, the bill adds a "public benefit review," to be overseen by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

State Rep. Tim Toomey, who’s also a city councilor, was one of three dissenters in the vote.

The bill is awaiting Gov. Deval Patrick’s approval.

Recently, developers of the $2 billion development announced they were putting the project up for sale, on the order of a Delaware judge. The real estate brokerage handling the development's sale, Cushman and Wakefield of Massachusetts, has said the firm is not anticipating the pending legislation to deter prospective buyers.

No one at Cushman and Wakefield, nor Pan Am Railways — the development’s principal owner — would comment last week as to any progress made in finding a new owner for NorthPoint.

City Manager Bob Healy earlier this week told officials the city could begin to see property tax revenues from the two residential buildings as soon as January 2008, but could also begin to lose up to $1.2 million a year in projected property tax revenue if the project is not completed in the next six years.